Statistical modeling and bit error rate analysis for bio-sensor receivers in molecular communication

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2019.2933222

The behavior of bio-sensor receivers is studied for molecular communication (MC). Bacteria can be engineered as a bio-sensor receiver to produce an output signal, e.g., produce green fluorescent protein, with respect to an external concentration pulse (MC signal). The signal transduction of bacteria, i.e., bacteria response, can be used to detect the pulse- amplitude modulated MC signals. In this work, a statistical model for the bacteria-based bio-sensor receivers is developed. Statistical signal models are useful to evaluate the reliability of the communication systems. The bacteria response is modeled by approximating a first-order model of signal transduction in the linear ramp-up region. The bacteria response is found to be a function of the response rate (linear ramp-up slope) and the time. Bacterial signal transduction is inherently noisy due to the cascades of biochemical reactions to produce the output signal. Therefore, the first-order model is extended incorporating the noise in both the rate and the timing (random delay) of the bacteria response. The bit error rate performance is studied to reveal the impact of the timing noise against the response rate noise. The developed statistical signal model can aid performance evaluation of bacteria-based bio-sensor receivers in MC and biological sensing.